Cool Cherry Cream

Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant and who had eight kids already — three who were deaf, two who were blind, one who was mentally retarded — and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates.

Candidate A

1. Associates with crooked politicians
2. Consults with astrologists
3. Has had two mistresses
4. Chain smokes
5. Drinks eight to ten martinis a day

Candidate B

1. Kicked out of office twice
2. Sleeps until noon
3. Used opium in college
4. Drinks a quart of whiskey every evening

Candidate C

1. Decorated war hero
2. Vegetarian
3. Doesn't smoke
4. Drinks an occasional beer
5. Never cheated on his wife

Which of these candidates would be your choice?

- - -

The Answers
Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate B is Winston Churchill.
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler.

And, by the way, the answer to the abortion question: if you said yes, you just killed Beethoven.

I always forget the answers to these forward riddles, but I know there's always a trick, so I attempted to figure them out.

Concerning the first question, I would have to ask whether the woman gave birth to these eight kids; perhaps they were adopted. Given the information provided, I would recommend the woman do what she feels is right. I would never recommend someone get an abortion, because that's just not my decision to make.

I don't know much about genetics and what the chances are that the child would be born with one of these afflictions, but I would hope that this woman would find out and decide whether or not she thinks she could handle that situation, and judging from her past, it wouldn't be a problem, because that didn't stop her the sixth or seventh or eighth time.

For the second question, the only piece of information that matters about each candidate is the first one. Otherwise, I don't care whether this person smokes or drinks or eats meat. That means nothing about their capacity to be a world leader.

Candidate B was "kicked out of office twice". Don't know why he was kicked out, so let's assume it was for legitimate reasons, in which case, this candidate has one strike against him.

Candidate C is "a decorated war hero". Obviously this candidate likes war and violence, and that is not a good quality for a world leader to have. Strike against him. Although I do recognize that it's nice to have pride in one's country and yada yada, but I still believe no wars would be better.

Candidate A "associates with crooked politicians". And I mean, these are politicians we're talking about. I think anyone in that industry is guilty of this, assuming they aren't hermits who don't actually go to work.

Speaking of someone's capacity to be a world leader and people's qualities and such reminds me of something I wanted to write about that happened in Creative Writing the other day.

I don't recall exactly how we got onto the topic, but the teacher was talking, basically, about good kids and bad kids, and how you could tell which kids went to church and which kids came from good families.

Wow. Are you implying that going to church makes you one good person? Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder? On the other hand, the family thing probably does have merit though, so I'll forgive her. See, even though I don't go to church, I'm still capable of being a decent person.

From what teachers in the past have told me, my parents, written on my report card, etc, I think I would be considered a good kid. As I said, I don't go to church, but I do come from a good family.

However, I don't know if my family would necessarily be considered a good family by my teacher, judging by other parts of the conversation. I mean, we're normal, we love each other, yada yada, and it's all really good, but we are a bit quirky.

Any member of this family can say a hearty "fuck you" to any other member of the family and not be reprimanded (provided it's in a joking way, because I'm sure if any of us kids actually meant it, well, it would not be pretty… of course, it would be a rare occasion that we would actually mean it, since as I said, it's mostly sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows with this bunch).

I think this quirk probably came about because my parents would accidentally say it in front of us kids and then realize it would be hypocritical of them to tell us not to say it, and I have to say that's pretty cool of them to realize that they're being hypocritical and not wanting to be. I'm hypocritical all the time, and when I do realize it, I carry on with what I was doing and hope no one else notices.

Personally, I don't use the eff-word in public, so it would probably surprise most people I know to find out this fact. Really, it's only a word, and I don't see why people get so worked up about it, but myself, and I'm assuming the rest of my family, have a sense of decency and thus we don't use the word around people who could possibly be offended by it.

Really, it can all be summed up by a Pete Townshend quote: "I only swear at people I love". And yannow, it's true, at least for me. The person I'm most comfortable around is myself, and when I'm alone, I swear a hell of a lot. I suppose you could also say I'm rather close to my computer, and thus it suffers a lot of verbal abuse from me. After that would come my family, and I've already explained that situation. Then comes my friends, who I'll occasionally swear around, but since I'm technically still in public, that damn sense of decency gets in the way, and so a lot of friends still probably haven't heard me swear.

I swear I already wrote all this long ago, but I can't seem to find it, so I guess I'll write it again.

I realized awhile ago that the best way to tell if I'm your friend is how mean I am to you. I'll make fun of my friends and say they're stupid and things like that, all of which I obviously don't mean. But it does mean that I'm comfortable around them, and I feel they understand me, understand that I can be sarcastic, and understand that I mean very little of what I say.